I am an online marketer with a 8-year track record helping companies meet operational and profit objectives by finding their prospects and brand advocates on search engines and social media. I have coordinated and executed online strategies for Donald Trump, The Nielsen Company, Adweek, AOL, and many other global brands. I have driven millions of pageviews using social media. I vlog on how businesses can use social media marketing and the search engines to meet their business objectives. Please add me to you circle on Google +

Ten Myths About Social Networking For Business

Why it’s perpetuated: At first blush, social media feels like a cheap and powerful bullhorn. It is, but don’t be surprised when blasting messages in one direction–from you to them–only generates a trickle of traffic. The trick is to get people involved, and keep them involved.

Action plan: Since the dawn of retail, sweepstakes and giveaways have been a great hook. For ideas, query [your social network of choice] + contest or sweepstakes or giveaways on Google. Maybe you’ll read about how a computer store sold more laptops by holding a contest for free iPads that required people to make their entry on the store’s Facebook page. Formulate a similar marketing campaign that fits your niche. If you have a bakery, you could hold a contest for free customized birthday cakes by requiring participants to enter on your Facebook page. Voila! Not only have you scared up more customers, you also have an instant focus group to test your cakes and other goodies.

Myth 6: Social media can replace your website.

Why it’s perpetuated: Social media is the new shiny red apple. It’s not going anywhere, but neither are web sites.

Action plan: Email remains one of the most powerful ways to prospect for business. Although you can capture email addresses on social media networks, it is a lot easier to simply add a form at multiple locations on your web site. Here’s how: Sign up for Aweber, an email marketing service that helps you collect email addresses and blast messages as often as you like. The basic plan costs $20 a month. Create incentives—any kind of premium content—that you can give to email subscribers if they recruit customers for you using their social networks. (Distribute the incentives using a free tool like CloudFlood.) Offer new recruits the same offer, and so on. Do this right and a virtuous cycle kicks in, expanding your email list very quickly.

Myth 7: You can’t measure your return on investment in social media.

Image by Dottie Mae via Flickr

Why it’s perpetuated:Many social media experts know how to use social networks to socialize, but they have little to no marketing expertise–meaning they don’t know how to turn all that socializing into cash flow.

Action plan: Track where your users are coming from; identify the actions they took on your site (making purchases, viewing a 10-page slide show, whatever); calculate the value of that activity. There are a few steps along the way, but they aren’t difficult, so stay with me.

Say you want to track subscribers to your company-email list who came through social-media channels. First, build a “Thank you for subscribing” page on your site that people see after signing up to your email list. Then set up that page as a “Goal” in Google Analytics (follow the instructions in Google’s Conversion University). That will let you see the proportion of subscribers who signed up after clicking a link to your site that was posted on a social network.

Next, also define as a second Goal the confirmation page that loads after someone buys one of your products. The next time you link to a specific promotion in an email blast, add tracking tags to that link using the Google Analytics URL Builder. Now, if a subscriber hits the purchase-confirmation page anytime after clicking that promotional link, you will see that tracked link as the referring source.

To calculate the return, take what you made from your list and divide by the number of subscribers gathered through social networks. I have worked with retailers who sold products to 10% of their email subscribers through their most effective campaigns. (By contrast, many direct-mail campaigns yield response rates of less than 1%.) Slick, right?

Myth 8: Blogging is a waste of time.

Why it’s perpetuated: There is so much noise on the internet, why bother blogging? Here’s why: It gives you a voice and at least a modicum of control of your brand–especially if you really have something important to say and you say it on a consistent basis.

Action plan: Blogging is very easy. Download the WordPress blogging platform from WordPress.org. Install it on your server into a new directory (if you have Fantastico on your web server, it will load up like butter). Next, find some of the best questions your prospects have posed and write an article that responds to their inquiries. Add a question at the end encouraging people to post their comments. Share the content with your prospects, customers and on the social networks, and ask others in your network to share the content. Repeat.

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This article is phenomenal. It reiterated certain myths such as, “Everyone is on Social Media,” it built my confidence with the “You can do it all in house,” because I will be doing my social media marketing in house by integrating a software into my site, www.TheSportsWonk.com that allows for members to broadcast my site on social media platforms such as YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook to gain points in my raffles. Most digital marketing companies will promote SEO and Social Media marketing, which is important, but entrepreneurs should be researching for marketing software as well because certain softwares can really proliferate a marketing campaign. My favorite point was, “Blogging is a waste of time,” is a myth because IT IS A MYTH. I used a popular message board to drive hundreds of clicks per day to my site including certain sports videos that would get hundreds of clicks and more recently I figured out the best way to convert visitors and I received 15 new sign ups with one post. Also, if you just read this post it proves that Blogging works.

Great job, Jason, on engaging your target community on the message board. As long as you follow the documented (TOS) and undocumented rules of engagement, you could always develop a solid way to generate positive kickback from any social network. Don’t love the network; love the people on the network.

As far as growing my social network, I wonder if email marketing done right will be an efficacious marketing option for my site. I recently did data entry on about 2,000+targeted email addresses and I plan on putting together an email that includes a video for them, which covers the capabilities of my website. I also have the email addresses of all of my new sign ups to my site so I will send them a welcome email that includes information about my raffles, features, etc. and I am hoping that this type of CRM will create more visits to my site from current members. Also, I made sure that my email marketing software that I will be using has a, “unsubscribe,” button so that I don’t become a spammer in the eyes of my members. Thanks for the advice, “Don’t love the network; love the people on the network.”

How do people get paid to write stuff they know nothingabout? Myth #2 is ridiculous. Pretty much ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of anything ever posted to Digg was on Twitter and Facebook LONG before anyone on Digg saw it. At least the stuff anyone actually cares about.

Neal, very well done. This the first time I have read anything from you and was very impressed with your thoroughness and readable explanations. Sometimes I think those of us in the biz get a little too caught up in jargon that comes easily to us, but we forget about the newbies. You struck a great balance.

I agree that Stumbleupon and email remain two important channels for growing and engaging an audience.

About measuring ROI…calculating the value of a single visit is a start, but what are your thoughts about the lifetime value of a customer? Sometimes online marketing efforts take time to accrue value. It’s an investment.

Thanks for the article Neal. As a newbie to Social Networking for business I found your article very informative and helpful. I am not quite as intimidated by the task assigned to me to get my company’s name out there. Is there a way I can archive this article so i may refer back to it from time to time?

Thanks for the article Neal. As a newbie the social networking for business I found your article helpful and informative. I am not quite as intimidated by the task that has been assigned to me to get our company name out there. Is there a way that I can archive this article so I may refer back to it from time to time?

This is a very well written article with lots of great insight on social media marketing. I really enjoyed this article and look forward to other posts by you. Thank you for all the insightful information.

When offering a service in a very horizontal market is very difficult to hit all the channels effectively. I’m solely responsible for the online marketing for our business and its quite overwhelming when managing blog, social media, SEO, PPC, email marketing campaigns effectively.

Thanks Neal for a great article. I agree with everything you said. The very nature of Social Networking is about real human interactions, posting without engaging or having someone else who does not know anything about your business or niche write your social networking interactions for you will not work. With that being said what I have to add to your article is that while a lot of companies use social networking for marketing to get new clients but not a lot of companies use it to keep in touch with client they already have. Social networking is a great place to keep in touch with you clients after they bought your product or service so you can get feedback maybe have them post a review or come back and buy some other product or service from you in the future, even to give support.